


reflection

by BookRockShooter



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Character Study, Coming Out, Ellie-centric, F/F, For the most part, No Plot/Plotless, also teen for language, i think?? idk djksdd, it's just. words, just ellie thinking about. feelings. and me lowkey projecting. but don't mind me, this was supposed to be just ellie coming out to joel and is instead a sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22447711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookRockShooter/pseuds/BookRockShooter
Summary: Ellie on her feelings for girls and her relationships with people.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), mentions of Ellie/Riley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 115





	reflection

**Author's Note:**

> so i finally played tlou for the first time ever recently and i felt many emotions. most of them were about ellie because i adore her and relate to her on some levels and also i cried playing the side story with her and riley so. there's that skdjsk
> 
> idrk what this is?? i wanted to write Something from ellie's pov as practice for a longer tlou fic i wanna do, also from her pov, and it was originally just going to be her coming out to joel or smth (side note: i adore joel too ty) and it turned into This. i think it can be classified as a character study?? i think i just projected slightly and also just wrote without rly thinking about it. also it's almost 3am so pls don't mind me dkjfjkdf
> 
> also they are able to watch movies right?? i feel like i heard that there's a reference to them doing that in tlou2. if not then that's okay bc this is fanfiction and anything's possible
> 
> enjoy!

Ellie doesn’t really mean to bring it up.

They’ve been living at Jackson County for a few weeks now. Tommy had a whole house ready for them, filled with only-slightly-broken furniture and an old DVD player and television set that somehow withstood the downfall of humanity. Joel compared them both to a Nokia phone, whatever that was, and spent a week straight showing Ellie every movie they had in town, even the super bloody ones that he says he never would’ve shown Sarah. It wasn’t a completely new concept because she vaguely remembers the orphanage having movie nights, but it was still fun time spent with Joel, so she never complained.

It takes a while for her to adjust to living around so many people again. The orphanage and the military school were all fairly crowded, so the settlement isn’t much different in that aspect, but after spending almost a year with pretty much just Joel and a bunch of hostile strangers, it’s weird knowing that these people aren’t after her. Nice, but weird.

Eventually, it gets easier. She starts helping out around town more instead of patrolling and hunting with Joel all the time - mainly because Joel is overly-protective, but it’s not so bad having someone look out for her, anymore - and, naturally, meets new people. She’s not fond of being around any of the adults, Joel and Tommy and Maria being the only exceptions, so she ends up hanging around all of the teenagers and younger kids.

Jesse’s the first person she really clicks with, if only because he’s one of the only people interested in the comics Joel’s been finding for her. They spend most of their time together reading them and mimicking the really cool fight scenes. It makes her feel like a kid again - a real kid, one that grew up in a time before the world went to hell - and it’s fun.

It’s through him that she meets Dina.

Dina’s the second person she clicks with - she’s nice, and funny, and also insanely pretty, pretty in a way that reminds Ellie of all of the pictures of models she’d seen left behind in the malls and houses she and Joel went through. She stutters through their first conversation and Dina giggles at her, but it’s not mean. They become friends pretty quickly.

Alongside Jesse, they get attached to each other fast. Ellie drags Dina to meet Joel and she can tell that Joel likes her even if he doesn’t necessarily say it. They show Dina their comics and she reveals herself to be an awful actress when they make her act out scenes with them, but it’s fun. They’re the first few people her age that Ellie feels comfortable with since Riley and Sam, and she loves it.

She’s not sure when she starts looking at Dina a little differently. Maybe around the same time Jesse does, maybe a little before, but it hits her one afternoon when they’re watching a movie. Ellie’s next to Joel but leaning into Dina’s side, yawning through her hand because it was Jesse’s turn to pick the movie and whatever he put on is real fucking boring. At one point, though, Dina laughs, making Ellie jump, and then she glances at her and it’s almost like time sort of stops because when did Dina get so beautiful?

It’s not a startling revelation, really. It’s similar to the one she felt with Riley, only it hits a little harder because it’s only then that she realizes that she’s felt this way about two girls, now, and never about a boy.

Despite growing up when she did, Ellie knows exactly what being gay means. Most everyone her age didn’t treat it like a big deal, and she even knew a few other gay kids at the military school, but the adults she’s grown up around seemed to have a whole different idea. It wasn’t often brought up, but she remembers, once, when two boys were caught together, and the soldiers lost their goddamn minds. Didn’t go so far as to send them out to get infected or killed or anything, sure, but Ellie remembers how the soldiers used some words she wasn’t familiar with and that the boys never interacted again, from what she could tell. It bothered her at the time, sure, but it became so much worse when she met Riley and found herself wondering what it would be like to kiss her, or whatever it was that people did when they had feelings like that for somebody.

She avoided thinking about it for a while, panicked about it for longer, and then, upon not-so-casually asking Riley her thoughts on the situation with the boys and receiving her answer of so what? was it really that big of a deal? deems it the least of her concerns and, slowly but surely, decides that fuck it, who gave a shit that she liked girls when their world was currently overrun by fucking monsters.

Kissing Riley was nice. It was good, for the few seconds it lasted. She’d never kissed a boy before, but she imagines that it wouldn’t be half as nice as it was to kiss Riley, or any other girl for that matter. It was fueled by the fear of possibly never seeing her best friend again and ended with her expecting rejection and was, therefore, probably the scariest kiss she’ll ever have, but. It was nice. Losing her soon after hurt a hell of a lot more than she thought it would, too.

After she looks at Dina that night and realizes that she’s experiencing her feelings all over again, she doesn’t really think about it. She knows that Jesse likes her, too, because he stares at her all the time and starts to subtly insist that they hang out alone, without Ellie. Dina never goes along with it and insists right back that Ellie’s their friend and she’d never exclude her, but sometimes she catches Dina staring back at him, and it makes Ellie’s chest hurt because she wants that, but she can’t bring herself to say anything.

Apparently, having feelings doesn’t get any easier the more you have them.

All of this brings her to the present day. Ellie’s hunting with Joel when it just sort of slips out. They’ve already caught a few rabbits and a deer, but Ellie fucked up on getting another one with her bow because she’s so distracted thinking about her stupid feelings. When her arrow hits three feet behind the deer and scares it off, she knows that Joel’s noticed and waits for him to say something, sighing.

“What’s up with you today, kid?”

She’s not entirely sure what she meant to say, but it sure as hell wasn’t, “I’m gay and I like Dina.”

Joel’s silent for a beat before he says, “Okay. Do you, uh, want to talk about it?”

Her bow nearly slips from her fingers when she whips around to look at him. “What?”

Joel looks distinctly uncomfortable, which she was expecting because Joel isn’t exactly the best person to discuss this kind of shit with, but he also doesn’t look surprised. There’s no disgust there, either, like the soldiers had when they found those two boys. “What?” she repeats, and maybe it’s ridiculous, feeling so shocked at his reaction - or lack thereof - but, in her defense, not many people she’s met over the age of twenty seem too keen about people like her.

Joel shifts in place, fiddling with his gun, and he stares off into the forest. “I was a teenager too, kid. I know how much crushes suck. So… if you wanna talk, I’m all ears.”

“Oh,” she says. “Maybe… maybe not today. I just- that’s why I’m all… weird today. No big deal. Sorry about that deer, though.”

“S’okay. Think we have enough, anyway. We can probably head back now.”

“Alright,” she says, and doesn’t bother fighting back the grin she can feel forming. “Can we have another movie night?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Maybe Ellie doesn’t have the courage yet to admit anything to Dina, and she sure as hell isn’t about to start having awkward conversations about how much she likes her with Joel or anything, but the reminder that she’s perfectly normal for feeling the way she does is good enough for her, for the time being.

**Author's Note:**

> i need more tlou mutuals so if you'd like come yell about ellie and riley and dina with me on tumblr @bookrockshooter
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
